Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All [Paperback]

Brian Czech (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2002

Americans have been conditioned to appreciate, cheer, and serve economic growth. Brian Czech argues that, while economic growth was a good thing for much of American history, somewhere along the way it turned bad, depleting resources, polluting the environment, and threatening posterity. Yet growth remains a top priority of the public and polity. In this revolutionary manifesto, Czech knocks economic growth off the pedestal of American ideology. Seeking nothing less than a fundamental change in public opinion, Czech makes a bold plea for castigating society's biggest spenders and sets the stage for the "steady state revolution."
Czech offers a sophisticated yet accessible critique of the principles of economic growth theory and the fallacious extension of these principles into the "pop economics" of Julian Simon and others. He points with hope to the new discipline of ecological economics, which prescribes the steady state economy as a sustainable alternative to economic growth.
Czech explores the psychological underpinnings of our consumer culture by synthesizing theories of Charles Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, and Abraham Maslow. Speaking to ordinary American citizens, he urges us to recognize conspicuous consumers for who they are--bad citizens who are liquidating our grandkids' future. Combining insights from economics, psychology, and ecology with a large dose of common sense, Czech drafts a blueprint for a more satisfying and sustainable society. His ideas reach deeply into our everyday lives as he asks us to re-examine our perspectives on everything from our shopping habits to romance.
From his perspective as a wildlife ecologist, Czech draws revealing parallels between the economy of nature and the human economy. His style is lively, easy to read, humorous, and bound to be controversial. Czech will provoke all of us to ask when we will stop the runaway train of economic growth. His book answers the question, "How do we do it?"

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Economic growth is as American as apple pie and as popular as pizza. It has also, according to conservation biologist Czech, reached its limits and had led to "economic bloat," doing irreversible harm to the environment and literally destroying the future for the next generations. The main culprits here are mainstream, "neoclassical" economists (and also the political and economic elite supporting them) who through arcane theorization insist there are no limits to growth. Czech does a marvelous job of skewering the assumptions behind this notion and of introducing and synthesizing the perspectives of the opposing field, "environmental economics," which offers in the place of unbridled growth a "steady state" economy of low production and consumption and stable population. Moving through sometimes difficult ideas like "substitutability," "trophic levels" and "carrying capacity," Czech is always clear but never condescending, serious but not without humor. Agree with him or not, he is eminently clear. Yet it all falls apart when he discusses what might be done. Given the severity of the ecological crisis Czech finds us in, his recommendation that public opinion should shame conspicuous consumers among the rich into changing their ways is both vague and tepid. Missing are analyses of public policy options and considerations of political strategies that are as focused and nuanced as his critiques. Too bad, for when he's on his gameAin the first part of the bookAhe's as good at popularizing economics as Carl Sagan was science. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"[Czech] breaks down complex concepts . . . into easy-to-understand and informative terms."--The Compendium Newsletter

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Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; New Ed edition (August 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520225147
• ISBN-13: 978-0520225145
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #728,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Problem identified; solution in doubt May 18, 2003

By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

It is a curiosity of modern economic thought that some people--Brian Czech identifies them as "neoclassical" economists, led in part by the late Julian Simon--think there is no end to economic growth. When I first became aware of this idea some years ago I dismissed it out of hand along with what I saw as a couple of similar delusions, that of perpetual population growth and an ever-increasing agricultural yield. But maybe the seemingly impossible is possible after all!

To get right to the heart of the matter--which Czech does after noting that economic growth is a national goal; that is, a political and (one might say) an emotional goal somewhat in the manner of "manifest destiny" from the nineteenth century--we need to ask why Simon (and other respected economists) think that such a fantastic thing as perpetual economic growth is possible.

First they start with "substitutability," the idea that when we run short of some resource another will be developed or otherwise come along to take the place of the now scare resource. Thus plastic replaces wood; coal will replace oil, wind power and mirrors in space will replace coal, and farmed fish will take the place of the wild variety. Second, there is the notion that the efficiency of engines and other technological developments will increase endlessly. And third, there is the relatively new idea of "human capital," a kind of fuzzy--one is tempted to say mystical--belief that human intelligence, education and knowledge will just keep right on growing and growing and growing, getting more and more from less and less.

Perhaps these guys never heard of entropy or diminishing returns--or they think that such things are so far in the future that they needn't be mentioned. I suppose somewhere along the way the neoclassicists do recognize that in the very long run even the universe will grow cold, and economic growth will become but a faint and very distant cosmic whisper.

What Czech observes, as he convincingly destroys Simon's perpetual growth arguments as Simon articulated them in The Ultimate Resources 2 (1996), is that "Eventually they will recharge their arguments...by resorting to the topic of space travel" (p. 44)--meaning that if we run out of resources on earth, we'll just go to the moon, to Mars, to Alpha Centauri!

So what Julian L. Simon and the others are really saying is not clear. What is clear is that they want no limits on economic growth, and they especially do not like to hear sob stories about what we are doing to the environment in pursuit of an ever expanding economy. But what Brian Czech does in this sprightly tome is throw a kind of Niagra Falls flood of water on America's love affair with what he calls "liquidation"--that is, the liquidation of natural capital for present consumption to the impoverishment of future generations.

As others have pointed out he does a good job of demolishing what he dubs "the Ptolemaic theory of perpetual economic growth" (p. 51) in favor of "a more Copernican economics...in which economic growth is limited." (p. 49) He calls this new paradigm, "steady state economics" or "ecological economics," in which the natural resources of the planet are not wantonly wasted and destroyed by greedy "liquidators" bent only on self-gratification and status display, but instead maintained by more frugal steady-staters seeking self-actualization as their primary goal in life. This recall of psychiatrist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs fits right in with Czech's hope for a sustainable economy since self-actualization need not require more fuel than the planet has.

What Czech does not do well is convince this reader that his steady state plan has a snowball's chance in the boiler room of his runaway train of becoming the accepted paradigm before we use up most of the world's non-renewable resources. What with the acquisitive nature of the human animal (which Czech delineates very well in his portrait of the "Liquidating Class") and the need of corporations and government leaders to go from "ups to upper ups" economically-speaking (to recall Lucy's words in the Peanuts comic strip), there is little prospect that conservation-minded individuals will have enough influence to stop the train before it crashes.

What is terrible about this--and this is what Czech is warning us about--is that it will be our grandchildren who will pay the price as the rain forests turn to burgers and the ocean's fisheries to a whopping fish story in the memory of the last fisherman. What kind of world will it be? I don't think that the Bush administration and the present political leaders of most of the world really care. They see it as somebody else's problem downstream. Czech's optimism that the train can be stopped seems like so much whistling Dixie in the dark.

I think the deeper issue here is that of the capitalist/corporate economic system itself. Capitalism defeated communism, and we can say hurrah for that. But can a planet with finite resources survive an economic system that seems to function well only when it is spiraling upward? Since capitalism is the current paradigm, to suggest that it needs replacing amounts to something like blasphemy. Consequently Czech does not target capitalism per se. After all he has a career and a reputation to consider. However, I have neither to worry about, and I can say it: capitalism as an economic system is becoming a cancer on the planet. Perhaps the system that will replace it (still awaiting its genius) will build on Czech's steady state ideas.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Read this for �the grandkids� June 11, 2001

By Edward Bosnar

Format:Hardcover

Czech, a wildlife biologist who later did post-graduate work in economics, provides an interesting analysis and critique of the concept of economic growth in the U.S. He challenges the notion that economic growth can continue unabated, as all resources, however abundant at one point, are finite, and all economic activity, down to the most tertiary of service sectors, depends to some extent on production (use, consumption, processing of natural resources). He also quite plausibly refutes an argument often made by economists who support the growth theory that lower prices of raw materials or resources bascially mean an abundance thereof (often it simply means that extraction or labor costs have gone down). Like any good ecologist, he also stresses that market costs of a given economic activity rarely reflect the real cost to things like the potable water supply, air quality, etc. Czech also introduces some interesting new terms to environmental economic parlance, such as economic bloating as a substitute for economic growth, or `liquidating class' to refer to that section of the population that consumes conspicuously and needlessly. Czech calls for a transition to a zero-growth or steady-state economy (hardly a new concept) which does not entail dismantling or even radically changing the current capitalist system. The main problem is that this requires a major attitude change, nothing short of a revolution, in the way people think about the economy, growth and the future (if they do at all). While some of the conclusions about how this can be achieved are questionable, this is generally a very thought-provoking book. Czech does a good job of blending economic theory with his knowledge of the natural sciences, and making it all quite readable and understandable. If you can get past his constant use of the rather annoying rhetorical device about "the grandkids," this is a very worthwhile read.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious, Moral, Thoughtful, Disturbing, Sensible, Alone August 27, 2001

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

There are some very harsh truths in this book, in which a very thoughtful Conservation Biologist takes on the very hard challenge of defining a political and economic model that is survivable.

From his early doctrine of "competitive exclusion" (one species can benefit only at the expense of others) to his methodical and progressive dismantling of economic growth as an unquestioned political goal, of the prevailing economic theories as being totally insane (efficiency does not prevent the depletion of natural capital from a limited earth), to his sensible and moral and provocative outlining of the ecological economics (or the economics of environmental survival), this is a book that teaches and this is a man I would trust to counsel a future President....

This book will appeal to anyone who considers himself or herself a Cultural Creative, and I hope it appeals to the "silent majority" that could yet make a difference in "political economy." Whether we save the Earth for future generations boils down to this: are the citizens of the various nations, the employees of the various corporations, prepared to think for themselves? Are they prepared to join the global grid of free thinkers and cyber-advocates that are finding that the Internet is the lever that will move the world and empower the people once again? The author argues, in a compelling, academically sound and morally encouraging way, that America above all nations finds itself in a new civil war, a war between the "liquidating class" and the "steady state" class.

Besides citizens, this book will provoke and enlighten venture fund managers, political action campaign managers, and leaders of any organization. Others have certainly been down this road, the Club of Rome being especially noteworthy as an early attempt to establish trade-off values, but I believe this gentle, capable professional (with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Refugees) has written a timely book that is in its own way the "Silent Spring" of this generation. Perhaps more to the point, he makes it clear that all environmental issues, all economic issues, are inherently political, and we the voters have a choice in every election: between the candidate indebted to corporate carpetbaggers, and the candidate beholden to the people.